Republican Neel Kashkari, 39, photographed in East Palo Alto, California on Friday, November 8, 2013. The 39-year-old former Bay Area Goldman Sachs banker oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program in two presidential administrations.

Former Treasury Department official Neel Kashkari, a moderate Republican who is expected to run for governor, has failed to vote in nearly half the elections in which he was eligible since 1998 - including the 2012 presidential primary and the 2005 special election called to decide the reform agenda of then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - public records show.

Kashkari, 40, a former Goldman Sachs and Pimco executive who ran the $700 billion federal bailout for financial institutions under both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, first registered to vote in California in 1998. But records in the five California counties where he has lived at various times - San Mateo, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Orange and Nevada counties - and from Philadelphia, where he lived from 2000 to 2002, show that he has failed to cast ballots in 10 of the past 23 elections.

The records show that as a resident of Los Angeles, Kashkari did not vote in the 1998 general election that pitted Democrat Gray Davis against Republican Dan Lungren, or in the 2000 California GOP presidential primary election, a spirited race between Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain. While registered in San Mateo County, he skipped the 2004 presidential primary.

Kashkari, who has said he would make education a top priority in his prospective gubernatorial campaign, has also missed a number of school-related elections. He did not vote in Nevada County in a 2011 parcel tax election for the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District and a 2003 special election in San Mateo County that included municipal and school measures.

2005 election

He also failed to cast a ballot in the 2005 statewide election called by Schwarzenegger to decide several initiatives, including increased teacher tenure requirements, free universal preschool, state spending limits and restrictions on union dues for campaign contributions. All the measures were defeated.

Kashkari spokesman Aaron McLear said the Republican voted for Bush in the closely contested 2000 presidential race against Democrat Al Gore - though a document from the city commissioner in Philadelphia, where Kashkari was living at the time, says he never cast a ballot there.

Kashkari's spotty voting record could raise the specter for Republicans of another first-time candidate from the private sector, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, whose nonvoting record hurt her in her gubernatorial run against Jerry Brown in 2010.

Whitman's record was far more dramatic - she had not cast a ballot for more than two decades. Democrats pounded her mercilessly on her way to a landslide loss.

McLear said Kashkari has been "registered continually since he was 18 years old" and has been open about his voting absences. He said most of Kashkari's missed elections came when he was a student or traveling in his financial investment jobs, and that he made an effort to vote in major elections.

He said Kashkari has shown his dedication to good government by agreeing during the 2008 economic crisis to run the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which helped keep numerous banks and other financial institutions from going under.

Kashkari "strongly believes that people should actively participate in the political process," McLear said.

Brown's war chest

Brown has not announced his re-election bid, but he has amassed a $17 million campaign fund and is widely expected to run for an unprecedented fourth term. Republican former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado's decision last week to abandon his gubernatorial campaign leaves Kashkari, a supporter of abortion rights and same-sex marriage rights, as the likely moderate alternative on the Republican side to Tim Donnelly, a San Bernardino County assemblyman and Tea Party favorite.

The former assistant Treasury secretary has spent the past year laying the groundwork for a gubernatorial run, including putting together a team of campaign veterans and taking his message of educational and economic reform to such venues as an Oakland homeless shelter and schools for low-income children.

High-level advice

He has also been getting advice from such prominent Republicans as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Kashkari is scheduled to deliver an address to business leaders at California State University Sacramento on Tuesday, and speculation is that he will make his candidacy official.

"It's more symbolic than anything else - but symbolism reigns large in politics," Gerston said. "Voting means involvement - it signifies concern. So should one decide not to vote, it leads people to ask ... 'Why (would he vote) now? Where's the bolt of lightning, and why has it struck?' "

Gerston added, however, that Kashkari is far better positioned than Whitman was to offer a "perfectly reasonable response" to questions about his voting record.

He may say that "he's been doing things in the public and private sectors that relate very much to us as society," Gerston said. "If you're Kashkari, you could say, 'Twenty years ago, I didn't see myself as running for governor. But I worked in government to try to make things better.' "

GOP right is skeptical

Still, under California's new "top two" primary system, in which the leading two vote-getters in the primary advance to the general election regardless of party, the revelations may provide ammunition to already-skeptical conservative GOP activists.

In an interview last year, Kashkari said he voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because he thought the Democrat "was the right person to handle the acute economic crisis."

But Kashkari, who left the Obama administration in 2009 for the investment firm Pimco, said he has not supported the president's "broader economic agenda, nor his efforts to reform health care through the Affordable Care Act."

He also said 2008 was the only time he voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. In 2012, he said, he voted for Mitt Romney.

Records show that Kashkari cast a ballot in the 2012 general election. Orange County documents say Kashkari did not vote in the June 2012 Republican primary, in which Romney faced nominal opposition, though McLear said Kashkari "believes he sent his absentee ballot in."

Voting history

Neel Kashkari's voting history.

1998 to 2000: Registered in Los Angeles County. Did not vote in 1998 gubernatorial election or the 2000 Republican primary.

2000 to 2002: Lived in Philadelphia. City commissioner's document says he never voted there, but a Kashkari spokesman says he voted in the 2000 presidential election.

2002 to 2003: Lived and registered in Santa Clara County. Voted in the 2002 gubernatorial election.

2004 to 2007: Registered in San Mateo County. Missed a November 2003 local election, the 2004 primary, a 2005 election on then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's statewide reform package and the 2006 primary. Voted in the 2003 gubernatorial recall and the 2006 gubernatorial election.

2006 to 2012: Missed a 2011 parcel-tax election for local schools as a Nevada County resident. Voted in the 2008 presidential election and the 2010 governor's race.

2012-present: Registered in Orange County as a Laguna Hills resident. County records say he did not vote in the June 2012 Republican presidential primary, though a spokesman says Kashkari believes he filed an absentee ballot. Voted in the 2012 presidential election.